Cygames, the Japanese video game developer responsible for a variety of popular games including Umamusume: Pretty Derby, has announced its intention to create an AI-focused subsidiary company.
Hi-Fi Rush, the most recent game from Tango Gameworks, is getting a special re-release in collaboration with Limited Run Games.
It's been another strange, difficult, and yet somehow also brilliant year for video games in 2025. Triple-A releases have been sparse again, compared to the boom times of old, with a great big GTA 6-shaped hole left in the final few months of the year. And yet once again, every gap left by the established order has been filled twice over with something brilliantly new.
A guide writer talking about how her favourite gaming related moment of 2025 was uncovering secrets? Who saw that coming… Seriously though, let me tell you about a little downside of my job: if we're covering a game, or considering doing so, I have to spoil everything for myself for planning purposes. End-game boss? Spoiled. Every collectible location and what happens after you've collected every magic hat or whatever? Spoiled. Plot twists, because I might as well go all in at this point? Spoiled. If I don't learn it before the game comes out, I'll certainly know about it shortly after release thanks to research. (I learned what happened to Zelda in Tears of the Kingdom via Google Trends. Google bloody Trends.)
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Of all the games released this year, all the triple-A blockbusters and genre-defining smash hits, nothing shook me as much as Umamusume: Pretty Derby. I won't deny that it was once a game I was embarrassed to be playing. But now? I'm all in, dude. I'm an English 27-year-old who is invested in Japanese horse racing. And if you too can push past your misgivings, you'll find one of the better strategy games released this year.
You know what I might have most about games? There's no universal way to play them. You buy a DVD, you buy a DVD player, and aside from maybe a region lock issue you're as good as gold. If I buy Snowboard Kids for the N64, and I don't have one of those, well, I'm up a particular creek. That has meant that many a game over the years has been stuck to particular platforms, one of the most surprising being Jet Set Radio Future, to this day a game that's still only available on the original Xbox, and the Xbox 360 through backwards compatibility. But! Thanks to some techy wizards, that might change in the near future.
While I would go so far as to say that I have an affection for the team here at RPS, they certainly tried my patience when it came to the Advent Calendar voting. How dare they not have played and loved the same games as me through the year? Here I was, new head honcho, and I couldn't find a single one in the bunch who had put the necessary hours into Chip 'n Clawz vs. The Brainoids. Shameful.
Thank goodness I can put that right with my Selection Box.
I'm not sure I've ever been so quickly transported back in time than I have in I Write Games Not Tragedies. It's not that I completely relate to what takes place in the game, but its sense of place, of atmosphere and feeling, is one I understand in my soul. The emo amongst you have probably already caught on to the vibe with its title, and for those of you that haven't, the game's aesthetics, writing, and soundscape certainly will.
At the tail end of 2024 the original PlayStation turned 30 years old. While the Xbox 360 is only hitting 20 and it's not an industry shaker to the degree the PS1 was, there's no doubt it earned its place as one of the most important consoles of all time. Xbox managed to challenge Sony in the traditional home console space the PlayStation had dominated with PS1 and PS2, and the console's brilliant line-up of games played a major role in that.
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